Samsung DROID Charge review

I’ve spent more than a week living and breathing alongside the Samsung DROID Charge, Verizon’s second 4G LTE smartphone, and and it had some pretty big shoes to fill following Verizon’s first 4G LTE smartphone, the HTC ThunderBolt. The DROID Charge is loaded with all the trimmings you could ask for, including a huge Super AMOLED Plus display with colors that will blow your mind, an 8-megapixel camera that can shoot HD video, and of course, support for Verizon’s 4G LTE network. But do all of these features make it worth the $299 you’ll have to drop in order to own one? Hit the break for my full review to find out.

Hardware / Display

Samsung told me that the “pet name” for the DROID Charge was the “Stealth,” and that’s certainly an accurate description of its industrial design. The area below the phone’s large 4.3-inch screen tapers down to a small chin, and its rounded edges, glossy mirror gray finish, and sharp accents around the camera lens definitely add to its fighter-jet style. Samsung’s Super AMOLED Plus display is one of the clearest, brightest, and sharpest screens I’ve ever seen on a smartphone. The display offers even deeper blacks than the Super AMOLED screen on Samsung’s Galaxy S phones, which is really saying a lot. Colors are stunning and you really just have to see it to understand the beauty, but a beautiful screen this size comes at a cost; the DROID Charge definitely has a bit of heft at just over 5 ounces, but at just 0.46-inches slim it easily slid into my pocket.

Unlike the Galaxy S devices before it, the DROID Charge has hardware keys below the screen instead of touch-sensitive buttons. The keys have nice bounce and each has a soft white backlight that illuminates while the screen is activated. Under the hood the DROID Charge runs on a 1GHz processor, which is a bit lower powered than the dual-core NVIDIA Tegra 2 devices that have started to infiltrate the market. Still, there’s 512MB of RAM that helps speed things up a bit, and our unit came with a 32GB microSD card so there’s more than enough space to store videos, music, and photos. A 32GB microSD card runs about $60 on Amazon, so I’m starting to see why the DROID Charge is priced as high as it is.

One feature that I really enjoyed using was HDMI-out. You can purchase movies from Media Hub for about $9.99 each, or move files over to the phone using your USB cable, and then output them to an HDTV using a mini-HDMI cable. There were a few hiccups in the frame rates, but otherwise the movie played without a hitch. I’ll revisit this a bit more in the camera section of the review.

Software

Here’s where things get a bit stale: The DROID Charge runs Android 2.2 (Froyo) with Samsung’s custom TouchWiz user interface on top. I’m not a big fan of TouchWiz — it’s too cartoony looking, the widgets are always larger than necessary, and they don’t use screen real estate efficiently. There are several useful features, like the ability to sync Twitter or Facebook with your address book, but generally TouchWiz turns me off. Thankfully, the DROID Charge’s processor hummed along just fine despite the UI, which can slow things down just a bit on other devices. There are also other small issues that drive me mad about TouchWiz, though — like its black e-mail interface — and at times I just wish Samsung had stuck with a vanilla version of Android on the Charge.

The Charge’s virtual keyboard mirrors those on Samsung’s Galaxy S devices, and I’m not a fan. The space bar is too small and seems to be positioned too far to the left; half the time I try to type a space I end up hitting the period button instead. This, of course, is where third-party developers come in, and I definite;y recommend installing your third-party keyboard of choice on the Charge.

There’s a fair amount of bloatware on the phone including VerizonApps, a Guided Tour, VZ Navigator, TuneWiki, City ID, Bitbop, and more. Thankfully, though, Verizon chose to use Google as the default search option on the DROID Charge, which is a welcome change from the Fascinate.

Calling / Data

The call quality on the DROID Charge was clear during my tests and I had no issue with dropped calls in New York City or during a trip to Orlando for BlackBerry World. Friends and family on the other end of the line said I sounded good, and the ear speaker was loud enough even while walking on busy streets. The speakerphone had adequate volume as well, but voices were distorted at higher levels. Callers said I sounded fine on speakerphone and they couldn’t tell I wasn’t directly talking into the handset.

The DROID Charge is Verizon’s second phone capable of placing phone calls while surfing the Internet, and this feature worked perfectly during my tests. I looked up a quick place to eat lunch while I had a friend on speakerphone, and I didn’t notice any drop in call quality or data speeds. BGR Editor in Chief Jonathan Geller, in his ThunderBolt review, wondered if perhaps the poor voice quality on that phone was related to the talk / surf feature, and I’m glad to report that’s not the case with the Charge.

Data speeds on Verizon’s 4G LTE network regularly exceeded 20Mbps on the downlink in New York City, and I typically saw upload speeds around 4Mbps. The download speeds are faster than you’ll find on any other U.S. carrier hands-down and are even on a par with home network connections.

There are drawbacks to being an early adopter, however. During my first week of testing Verizon’s 4G LTE network, it went down for just over 24 hours. Users weren’t compensated for the downtime, and I couldn’t even access a 3G network during the outage. That’s a big deal, especially for business users or those of us who rely on our smartphones throughout most of the day. Similarly, while tethered to a laptop, I noticed that the signal dropped a number of times, and there are reports from some websites claiming the same issue — hopefully this is something that will be fixed in a future software update. I’m not dinging Verizon, though; it’s the first to roll-out such a high-speed network and there are bound to be small hiccups along the way.

Battery Life

The DROID Charge moniker is quite fitting as I found the 1,600mAh needed frequent charging under heavy 4G use. The phone offered up better battery life than the 4.5 hours Jonathan saw with the HTC ThunderBolt, but it still wasn’t great. Generally, I was able to go from about 7:00 a.m. until 2:30 p.m. with moderate usage on 4G.

If you need to save battery life, there’s an option under wireless network settings to use a CDMA network only. This let me place voice calls and use Verizon’s slower 3G EV-DO network for surfing the Web. It’s definitely a welcome change over the HTC ThunderBolt, which didn’t ship with that option, although an app is now available. With 3G enabled, I was able to get through a full work day with moderate usage. Unfortunately there isn’t a widget to quickly switch networks out of the box; that would certainly be a welcome addition, but I’m sure Android enthusiasts will whip something up to fix that.

Camera

There’s an 8-megapixel camera on the DROID Charge, and I used it to shoot a bunch of photos during a trip to Florida. Images were crisp and colors looked true in daylight. Photos look amazing on the Super AMOLED Plus screen, and they just had a little distortion when I pushed them out to my 32-inch TV using HDMI-out. Pictures snapped under incandescent lights had a decidedly orange hue to them, but were otherwise perfectly acceptable.

A night shot taken of a neon sign, without the flash, had brighter colors bleeding into the darker areas of the screen, even with the camera’s anti-shake feature activated. In lower light conditions, the single-LED flash did a decent job grabbing our subject, too, but I prefer the dual-LED option on phones like the HTC ThunderBolt.

I shot several HD video clips in 720p, but the DROID Charge defaults to a 720 x 480 resolution, so you’ll want to be sure to activate the HD option for better video. The frame rates were fluid when I played the video back on the Charge’s display, and I was just as blown away when I watched the same clip on my TV using HDMI-out. The video and audio were both crisp and I didn’t notice any pixelation, even when panning the video around. One issue I did run into, though, is that the phone required a reboot when I unplugged the HDMI cable and then tried to plug it back in again to resume playback.

Wrap-up

If you’re looking for 4G speeds, the Samsung DROID Charge is the phone to beat — but you’ll need deep pockets. Sure, I’d take HTC’s Sense user interface over TouchWiz any day, but the DROID Charge offers a few things HTC’s ThunderBolt doesn’t, namely a gorgeous Super AMOLED Plus display and an out-of-the-box option to turn off 4G to save on battery life, which meant I was able to get through a full day with moderate usage when I didn’t need to surf the Web at blazing fast speeds.

The DROID Charge is priced at $299, which is $50 more expensive than its only 4G LTE competitor, the ThunderBolt. That’s for good reason, however. It offers better battery life, a killer display, clearer phone calls, and a much less bulky design — easily worth the $50 difference. Sure, Verizon has a number of new 4G LTE smartphones coming down the pipeline, but if you want in on the carrier’s blazing fast data now, the DROID Charge is your best bet, hands-down.

I left Verizon go to go AT&T just for the iPhone4. After three iPhone4’s in less than 11 months due to signal issues, I decided to sell the iPhone and go back to Verizon. I didn’t want to take another chance on an iPhone so I looked into DROID. I wanted the option to customize, and make the phone truly mine. Thus the desire for a droid.

After reading the reviews here, reading tech reviews, and asking friends about their older DROID’s I decided this Samsung Charge would be the one I wanted. I went to a Verizon Store and played with the phone for 3 1/2 hours, talking to the staff, doing Speed Tests on this one and other Droids along with my iPhone to see how 4G compared. I was impressed, and knowing it was Verizon I knew my dropped call issue would go away as well. So here I am.

The phone is very light weight, and the screen clarity is BETTER than my old phone, IMO. When my fingerprints are cleaned off, the phone is fine in sunlight on full brightness. I keep it quite dim to help with battery life, and it’s still very bright indoors.

Typing on it I think is WAY easier than my old phone. The smart type text this one has seems “smarter” and there’s less of those “oops what did I say” texts.

The fact there’s SO MANY apps you can download for this, along with color options, full capability to make and use ringtones right from the phone, and an 8 mega pixel camera, I’m very impressed with the features.

Battery life is a different story. An iPhone with heavy usage can go from the time I unplug it, at 8am, until 11pm (15 hours) right before bed. So far I have gone 10 hours with this phone after doing heavy research on what can help the battery. There are some MUST-HAVE apps out there to assist with this.

Bluetooth audio: I have to learn more about the settings but when I’m playing music via BT in my car which is BT audio ONLY, every now and then the sound cuts out for a split 1/4 of a second and comes back on. I think it’s when alerts come to the phone. This is very annoying but I think it’s something I can work with. I’ll know more after my trip to Vegas this week coming up where I’ll be using a BT headset the entire time.

APPS and APP Screens: Another I have to research thing, but at night I power off the phone….. mostly because it’s better for your battery to be charged when turned off, but if I do leave it on and
charge it over night, I end up having to reboot in the morning anyway since it get super slow if I don’t. I have my app screen (not the home pages but the app listings pages) sorted: phone settings on screen 1, social media and email communications screen 2, customizations like ringtone makers and walls on page 3, etc etc. Once in a while these pages get all garbled up and several apps are on the wrong screen even though they were in their organized place moments before. Not sure why this happens.

So the PROS:

– lightweight

– screen clarity and colors are supurb

– easy to use

– completely customizable

– sound quality on calls and music is good and crisp

– a cross between an iPhone and a Blackberry in handling

the CONS:

– battery life is less than of my previous phone but there are apps to help

with that. You just have to learn. I am getting more battery each day! I

think part of it is cache files. As you use it the phone doesn’t have to

Whoah…No widget for turning off 4G? Damn….the average user is going to be up in ARMS over that battery life (since they’ll be too dumb to go into the system settings)

Anonymous

Pretty sure he mentioned that you can turn off 4G :

“If you need to save battery life, there’s an option under wireless network settings to use a CDMA network only. “

Anonymous

He saying there is no widget sitting on the homescreen out the BOX like say the EVO. The average user wouldn’t be digging through the settings looking for a way to “Turn off 4G” they’ll just notice the bad battery life… <— is what he's saying.

Anonymous

Per other reviews, I believe this is on the drop down shade. I’m not sure how having a widget that says turn off 4G would make the average user know that battery life was improved, unless the widget said “click here to improve battery life”

Anonymous

True. What I was referring to was the lack of a homescreen widget (as found on the EVO) that they mentioned in the article. I don’t think base consumers are at home digging through menus to toggle 4G

http://www.facebook.com/matt.voran Matt Voran

EEK. is it just me, or do those pics of that nice device laying on that rough concrete just make you squirm? and then FACE DOWN! :O AAAGGGGHHHHHHH!

Jfinbox

Touch wiz ewwwch. waiting the Verizon variant of the HTC Sensation. It packs Sense. QHD display . Dual core CPU . And a killer body under one roof. With androids pace theyr going it should be here shortly .

Cer

Hard to believe that you’d choose deeper blacks, somewhat better battery life, a couple tenths of an ounce and unlikely or very late upgrade to Gingerbread over a far superior UI — the thing you interact with the most on the phone.

Jfinbx

@ChanceEncounterRecs:disqus to make your case better, i would add that comparing the TBolts “much” better UI, Camera, keyboard, and snappy UI. and the Sams Charge’ better then the “4.5 hours Jonathan saw with the HTC ThunderBolt, but it still wasn’t great”….. kinda definition of “better”, and the color-popping SAmoledP screen but slow UI , thats basically a “tie”, and personal prefference is the only verdict to be reached on this one.

Joedirt1105

If they don’t give an update on the release date within the next hour, they lost my business. This is fucking bullshit already…ever since the 28th of April it’s like they’re making like the phone doesn’t even exist. What the fuck is the problem? They could at least tell us what’s going on.

Joedirt1105

I was just told by a Verizon rep that Samsung has discontinued production due to the ongoing legal situation with Apple. Good luck waiting for this piece of shit

Plee009

You cannot be serious.

Joedirt1105

Oh I’m serious. Put it this way, Samsung said they’ll provide an update today. There you go.

http://twitter.com/EdGrassel Edward Grassel

has to be better than my thunderbolt.. its a complete fail.

http://www.droiddoes.com/ Norm

Another DROID win. DROID DOES!!!!!

fugata

NAH.. You know who wins? You, Norm. You’re the winner! NORM DOES!!!!

Anonymous

I’ve been using one myself for about 2 weeks now. They blocked the IMEIs from our activation system, but thats the beauty of Sim Cards. :)

Touchwiz needs to die in a fire, ASAP, first thing I did was install ADW.

Can back up the amazing battery life improvement over the T-Bolt.

Do have an issue where it suddenly decides it has no internet connection, even while connected to 3/4G or Wifi, only fix is a reboot.

I had a laundry list of problems with my Thunderbolt, I am hoping as soon as they patch the software I can switch back as I miss the Sense UI, and the Kickstand.

Shark01

I was sold a Charge one week ago and have had the same issue of having to reboot the damn thing. I live in a 3G area only, so I don’t get to see the speed of 4LTE. The phone is a giant improvement over my Blackberry 9700 Bold. I do love this phone, but I am starting to get worried about why they have not released them for sale to everyone else. I think that the salesman screwed up or was worried more about a commission for the phone sale to me.
Hopefully everything will get resolved, because I had already given up on the Motorola Bionic and went with the Samsung Charge. If things don’t improve with their network for this phone, I don’t know which phone to switch to next.

MadelynR13

Had three phones within 60 days . . . all three had major internet problems and lack of service. Was told by a Verizon tech that it is a known issue. Am returning it finally and getting the Bionic and praying I don’t have any more problems. Having to reload apps and setups is a drag, not to say anything about being time consuming.

GoodNote

@f2764533d40c9a405133567c6583dd7b:disqus Wildkatct – can you tell how much ADW completely replaces Touchwiz, or is Touchwiz still “wizzing” away underneath?

http://profiles.google.com/shaphan Shaphan Hawks

What?

http://profiles.google.com/booboolala2000 Patrick Crumpler

The TBolt has a bit more RAM so, I think I will stick with it.

Eludium Q36

Todd, I’m the Grammar Police and you get a mixed metaphor citation. It’s either “coming down the pike” or “in the pipeline”, not “coming down the pipeline”. Write safely…

Jfinbx

@Eludioum Q36 I’m with Internal Affairs within the Grammar PD and your getting cited for a Non-Proper description on the ticket. its “Todd, I’m *with* the Grammar police and you *are* *getting* cited for a ……… blah, bla. excelling in professionalism is our duty.

Crosscountry1813

“You’re”.

Anonymous

Finally! Froyo 2.2 FTW. Took long enough.

Anonymous

Few requests. Mention alternative home screens replacements as a simple solution to touchwiz.

Compare with galaxy s2.

Compare amount of text pixelation with normal samoled.

http://twitter.com/andreharry Andre Harry

cant they improve the battery life?! 5.5 hours is pretty much useless, especially on saturday / sunday when I normally go out for at least 9 hours.

http://www.facebook.com/people/Eric-Kroh/509408139 Eric Kroh

if you look closely at video samples..the red lights on cars are more of an orange..ugh..HTC or moto FTW

GoodNote

@Todd — Did you get a chance to check out the GPS function on the Droid Charge? There was at least one report of GPS glitches (taking a long time to lock in your location) on another Charge review, and apparently this was quite an issue with some other Samsung phones. I am seriously considering getting the Droid Charge (if/when it’s ever released!) but faulty GPS could be deal-killer for me. I even heard a rumor than Google turn-by-turn navigation might not work with Droid Charge (tho why would be, I don’t know). It’s nice that it has a great camera, but if I’m driving somewhere on relying on GPS or using GPS feature to find out nearby restaurants, gas stations, or whatever — having the GPS work well is a big deal to me.

Shark01

I got to use the Google GPS function right out of the box to navigate from the Verizon store to somewhere across Houston I had never been. It was great with no delays. That was my experience. I don’t know if that will be the norm. I was impressed with GPS feature mostly because I have never had a GPS in my hands while driving. Hopefully the phones will be out soon for everyone else.

GoodNote

Shark01, thanks for the reply … Hey Todd where’s your reply?

missinglink

Nice review. Now if only Verizon would let these loose in the wild. I was looking at the Thunderbolt yesterday and the sales rep said they had a stack of Samsung’s in back. He had no idea when they would be allowed to release them, but pushed the HTC as the better option. He mostly focused on the history of post-release support, which according to him is woeful on Samsung’s part.

You mention a lot that the Thunderbolt doesn’t have an option out of the box to turn the 4G antenna off, but you admit that an app to do that is available on the market. Is that really a negative? I’m sure most consumers can find an antenna app fairly easily. Plus they have the freedom to choose from different antenna management apps.

I was hoping to hear that the battery life is better. I just ordered a Thunderbolt off of AmazonWireless. Equipped with an after-market 1700mah battery, it should be comparable to the Samsung Charge. Having played around with SenseUI, I have to say I like it.

It looks like at the moment, 4G LTE and long battery life aren’t going to go together.

If you’re on the fence, it might be time to pick a 4G phone, as I have a feeling that tiered pricing will be coming sooner rather than later. Probably timed to coincide with the introduction of multiple handsets.

One question about the screen. I’ve heard variously that while the SuperAMOLED screens are vivid and bright, the colors may come off as over-saturated. Did you find that to be the case sometimes?

missinglink

Also, in the review for the Thunderbolt on Anandtech, it was suggested that simultaneous data and voice transmission would be exclusive to the Thunderbolt for quite some time. That is, that the Droid Charge would be limited to LTE areas for simultaneous voice/data, whereas the Thunderbolt had the hardware to do that even in non 4G-LTE areas.

Care to comment on that feature? For people who tether, it’s a feature that might be a deal-breaker.

LAL

This is bullshit. I’m so tired of not having an option to purchase a new Droid phone on Verizon that doesn’t have a keyboard (not a fan of the Droid 2’s keyboard). Why can’t they release one keyboard version of a 4G phone alongside the many, boring, slate phones? Samsung has the Epic 4G and HTC has the Desire Z variants that can easily be made into a new VZW 4G device.

LAL

*that does have a keyboard

tim

Because it would make the phone too fat. The lte radios take up too much space. Compare the thunderbolt to at&t’s inspire to see what I mean. Yes it is that simple.

LAL

Wow, did not know that. Thanks.

http://twitter.com/MrUniq78 Christopher

I was prepared to hate this phone but it seems it’s legit. To bad Sammy phones just seem poor in the MOD and update department.

tim

And it will sit in froyo until icecream sandwitch is released and samsung is ready to release yet a third generation of android phones. Just before verizon marks it eol.

VitiumCloud

That phone has a more repulsive form factor than a BlackBerry…. Also, I don’t understand the point of weighting the quality of the screen so much…. It’s a phone, function is far more important. TouchWiz is an abomination of Android… The Captivate was the worst experience I have ever had with a phone. When I bought it, the Galaxy S was the phone to beat with specs, but it translated into a horrible user experience. Sense runs beautifully… even on outdated phones, you could through TouchWiz on Watson and it would somehow lose to Ken Jennings.

missinglink

I’ve got to agree with you there. Although preference for a certain form factor is entirely personal, the phone strikes me as fairly ugly. It reminds me of a smaller version of a GPS unit or something.

Say what you will about Apple, but they make a beautiful looking product. That said, I like HTC’s look too. At around $130 on Amazon right now, it wasn’t a hard decision. Plus, Sense > TouchWiz any day of the week.

http://twitter.com/snookasnoo Idon’t Know

Looks and feels cheap and plasticky like all Samsung phones. Touchwiz is really terrible. Very nice screen and I liked the buttons better than I expected to.

GoodNote

I bought a Droid Charge today and I gotta say, the plastic doesn’t bother me. I believe the screen is Gorilla Glass and seems quite solid. It’s a large-ish phone and might have felt heavy if all metal. I could live without Touchwiz but I don’t think it prevents me from customizing my home screens and so on so that the apps I need and want are “front and center” and that’s all I really care about. Having a 4.3″ screen is really, really nice …

Van Ruden

Is there any way to change the brown/orange display colors? I’m dying for some help with changing this any answers would be GREATLY appreciated